Barrier Will Bring Neither Security Nor Peace

********From the radio newsmagazineBetween
The Lines
http://www.btlonline.org********Between the
Lines Q&AA weekly column featuring progressive
viewpointson national and international
issuesunder-reported in mainstream mediafor the week
ending Feb. 20, 2004********

The
Israeli government has announced that it is altering its
construction of what it calls a security barrier, to be
closer to the recognized boundaries between Israel and the
West Bank and to be less intrusive into Palestinian
territory. The barrier is now planned to be 420 miles long,
rather than the original 480 miles, and construction, which
is one-fourth complete, continues.

The Palestinian
authority, which opposes construction of the barrier, says
adjustments to the Wall's route are unacceptable. The
legitimacy of the Wall is now being challenged at both the
International Court of Justice in the Hague, which can issue
only an advisory ruling, and the Israeli Supreme Court,
where the Association for Civil Rights in Israel contends
the barrier infringes on Palestinian rights.

Between The
Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with Mazin Qumsiyeh, co-founder
of Al-Awda, or the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition. He
talks about the wall and about his conviction that the only
just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a
one-state solution where Jews, Muslims and Christians can
live together as equals.

Mazin Qumsiyeh: We call it
apartheid or segregation wall. It’s intended to put
Palestinians in Bantustans, basically, or ghettoes
surrounded by these huge walls, fences, ditches and security
barriers that are intended to impoverish them and isolate
them in such a way that eventually they will give up and
leave. It’s separating Palestinians from other Palestinians,
it’s separating Palestinians from their farms and lands.
Even with this idea of reducing the length of the wall
slightly, and avoiding too much pockets in it, it still ends
up creating at least three major ghettoes, basically, for
the Palestinians, reservations. The wall is being built in
the occupied areas; it’s not being built as a fence between
Israel and the occupied areas. It’s being built inside the
occupied areas, and it’s surrounding Palestinian towns and
villages, and it cuts very deeply into those areas, creating
four Bantustans ? three in the West Bank and one in
Gaza.

Between The Lines: Even people who don’t necessarily
support the wall say that the Israelis are building it to
try to prevent suicide bombers from coming inside the green
line, and you’re not even talking about that. You didn’t
mention that.

Mazin Qumsiyeh: Right. No, the barrier is
not a barrier for security. It does not provide security for
Israelis; in fact there’s been studies that show there are
increased security risks for Israelis. For example, Israel
cites that the wall around Gaza Strip reduced suicide
bombings. If that is the case, why are thousands of Israeli
soldiers ? a whole division is in Gaza Strip ? that’s
already surrounded by fences, and why is this division
demolishing thousands of Palestinian homes on the other side
of the fence that already exists in the Gaza Strip? So the
reality of it is that the wall is not about security. The
wall is about impoverishment and control and about
entrenching an occupation that’s illegal by international
law.

Between The Lines: What do you think about what
they’re calling now the Geneva Accords, these proposals to
basically arrive at a settlement between Palestine and
Israel?

Mazin Qumsiyeh: The Geneva Accord, just like the
road map, failed to mention human rights and international
law. Those four words ? two main things ? are ignored in the
Geneva Accord. And without human rights and without
international law, there can be no peace. The Geneva Accords
are basically sell-out accords by some Palestinian puppet
leaders in the West Bank who think they are representing the
Palestinians when in reality most Palestinians think of them
as collaborators with Israel and are trying to implement a
solution that was tried in South Africa and has failed, the
thought about the solution being that we can segregate
Palestinians, put them in a small area and call it a state,
and that would solve Israel’s demographic and other
problems. You cannot do that, you cannot ignore
international law, you cannot ignore the right of refugees
to return to their homes and lands and call it a solution
that will bring peace. It will never bring peace, it will
only bring more bloodshed.

Between The Lines: What is your
take on what the majority of Palestinians would like to
see?

Mazin Qumsiyeh: When we talk about Israeli public
opinion and Palestinian public opinion, this implies some
kind of parity or equality between Israel and the
Palestinians. Israel is a colonial, occupying power that
ethnically cleansed 530 Palestinian villages so that five
million of the nine million Palestinians are refugees or
displaced people. They don’t really have a voice in what
these arrangements are being made. Obviously, the
Palestinians all support resistance to the occupation. Some
of them support resistance by different means, by
non-violent means, some of them support violent means, and
on the extreme, there are some who support suicide
bombings.

Between The Lines: Describe a little more about
why you believe that a one-state solution is the only
possible solution to this very difficult to solve problem,
and, obviously, what that would look like.

Mazin Qumsiyeh:
It would be exactly like happened in South Africa. In South
Africa, you do not divide between the whites and the blacks.
That does not work. That’s number one. Number two is, within
the state of Israel, even if Israel, by miracle, withdraws
from all the West Bank and Gaza, which I don’t believe is
possible, because there are 400,000 Israeli colonists and
settlers in the West Bank and Gaza who are not going to
vacate, simply, and there’s no way you can have a viable
Palestinian state on 22 percent of Palestine, and even carve
it up even more to accommodate these 400,000 settlers or at
least the majority of them. But even if Israel withdraws
from the West Bank and Gaza and allows a Palestinian state
truly sovereign in the West Bank and Gaza, that still leaves
the problem of the fact that within the Green Line, in the
areas that Israel would end up controlling, there are 1.3
million Palestinians, and they include Christians and
Muslims. And Israel needs to become a state of its citizens
and not a state for the Jewish people.

For more
information, visit the group's website at www.al-awda.org.
Mazin Qumsiyeh is an associate professor of genetics at Yale
University and the author of "Sharing the Land of Canaan,"
soon to be published by Pluto Press.

- Electronic
Intifada Publishes news, commentary, analysis, and reference
materials about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict from a
Palestinian perspective- Tikkun Magazine,
www.tikkun.org, A community of people from many faiths and
traditions, with a vision of healing and transforming our
world.- "Israel/Occupied Territories: Wanton Destruction
Constitutes a War Crime"- "The origin of the
Palestine-Israeli conflict"- "Middle East Time
Line"- ZNet Middle East Watch, History and Context-
"Ten Years After Oslo"- "Israel's Bombing of Syria
Increases Fear of Regional
Conflict"

***********

Melinda Tuhus is
a producer with Between The Lines, which can be heard on
over 35 radio stations. This interview excerpt was featured
on the award-winning, syndicated weekly radio newsmagazine,
Between The Lines (http://www.btlonline.org), for the week
ending Feb. 20, 2004. This Between The Lines Q&A was
compiled by Melinda Tuhus and Anna Manzo.

In response to the challenges facing Scoop and the media industry we’ve instituted an Ethical Paywall to keep the news freely available to the public.
People who use Scoop for work need to be licensed through a ScoopPro subscription under this model, they also get access to exclusive news tools.

Joseph Cederwall: The corporate media sector seems unable to do anything to halt the raging dumpster fire of consolidation, layoffs and centralisation of content production. All this means we are increasingly seeing ‘news deserts’ appearing in local communities. Illustration by Paul Sahre.More>>

To the extent that solutions exist, they must be solutions that allow journalism to move outside of the broken system that has caused this situation. For this reason, a resurgence in more engaged and community focused local journalism offers hope for a way out of this situation. More>>

ALSO:

It is quite typical for Israeli politicians to carry out confrontational measures against Palestinians shortly before general elections are due. The nature of these measures is determined by the kind of political constituency that Israeli leaders aim to appease. More>>